Floor plan single-family house, 200 sqm, wooden house in American style, slab foundation

And I would rather do the kitchen storage-mudroom area like this. Swap storage and technology. A tall cabinet wall with a hidden appliance niche. This way you pass by the island, have straighter paths, and you can then store frozen food and beverage crates in the storage. The mini pantry hardly holds anything anyway.

Hi everyone,

thanks for all your effort and thoughts!

I’m trying to follow, understand, and basically take everything into account.

In the meantime, I have a new ground floor draft, this time drawn. What do you think?
Even if some of you can’t understand the dirty airlock/airlock/transition carport-house, this kind of space is considered good on other German sites and nobody wants to miss it anymore. Therefore, we will stick to it because we also find it practical.
Let’s see if I can at least roughly catch up with the upper floor. I find the effects that you make downstairs on an upper floor with sloping ceilings more than difficult.

Regarding your thoughts:
Ground floor

[*]The direction of the stairs was indeed rotated in the architect’s first draft. However, then downstairs, when you enter the house, you would always have the thick stair wall (the stairs are supposed to be cladded) right in front of your nose. And the double-leaf door (glass with muntins) to the living room would look very cramped between the stair wall and hallway wall and wouldn’t have an impact. That’s why the direction was changed.

But as it seems, the architect didn’t do more than he had to here, because as you have noticed, you now come out directly at the darker, narrow part of the hallway upstairs... I wasn’t aware of that at all, but now that you mention it...

[*]Large hallway: I think this is simply due to the location of the stairs plus the living room door. I also find it suboptimal that the hallway is bigger than the office but wouldn’t know any other solution.
[*]Pantry: this is only intended to store kitchen appliances (ice maker) or to stand directly connected on the 120cm countertop (toaster, air fryer). Plus storage of supplies etc. in pull-outs and wall cabinets. A 60cm freezer should also find a place here, because only a refrigerator (without freezer compartment) is in the kitchen.
We don’t have any beverage crates or other bottles to store. Except maybe once for a party, and for that I can use the storage/cellar substitute.
[*]In the passage carport-house there are primarily wardrobes and a large shoe cabinet plus a small bench. I really liked the idea of the garden door. I added it, so you can now also enter from the garden here. Regarding the suggestion to combine pantry and mudroom: I would rather not turn on the air fryer here because then the clothes would smell. Also, I don’t like to mix food storage and “outdoor clothes.” Sorry.
[*]Dining/living area: the seemingly lost space to the right of the dining corner is actually intended for a large houseplant or Christmas tree (I’m a total X-mas decor mouse after all). If I move the living room closer to the kitchen-dining room, I don’t think I can put such things anywhere.

Upper floor

[*]Placing the office upstairs between bedroom and children’s room is unfortunately not an option because we both work there during the day and also sit at the PC in the evening/leisure time and listen to loud music etc.
Additionally, there are sloping ceilings there which would collide with height-adjustable desks and tall bookshelves.
[*]Hallway: I also find it really poorly solved by the architect. This seating area comes from him but we don’t have furniture like this at all. I would probably fill the space eventually with new dressers/shelves/storage...
[*]The "allroom" only came about because the space was “still left over.” Actually sad...
[*]Regarding the bathroom: the first draft included a master bathroom and a children’s bathroom. For some reason the children’s bathroom disappeared in the second draft. So did the second shower for guests. It was simply completely forgotten. And now a new guest bathroom is needed...

We are now at 2/3 of the architect’s service (and were never satisfied so far). There will be one last small adjustment phase and we want to use it as best as possible. Therefore, we wanted to incorporate as much feedback as possible. Can you actually pull the plug on architects here and go to another one? But probably it’s not worth it or you just have to pay the usual 3-phase service fee again.

We also had floor plan drawings from a house building company, where the stairs were rotated by 90°. This does make the hallway more compact, but with a building window that is rather wide than deep, stairs going into depth make the kitchen, dining-living area narrower and the terrace again only 2m deep. That’s why we went the route with the architect.

Just explaining this simply and as a supplement, in case it’s relevant.

Best regards

You are now creating an extra mini room even without natural light! For a few kitchen appliances, without really having any workspace or washing facilities there. Not much fits in 120 cm, and then you always have to carry everything back and forth. And the path from the car to the pantry is no longer logical either. You can store all of that better in lockable work surfaces/cabinets in the kitchen. And do you really want to always come from the car with bags and stuff into the mini mudroom and then directly into the kitchen? That's no good either. For that, the wardrobe in the entrance is now even smaller.

If you don't want noise in the children's room from gaming, then this would be an alternative.

I find the effects one causes below on a top floor with sloping ceilings more than difficult.

Do I understand correctly that you chose the facade concerning the roof shapes and dormers and now are trying to make everything perfect inside? I think that is the wrong approach.

Can you actually pull the emergency brake with architects here and go to another one?

You can. But the right way would be to communicate what you don’t like and why so that they can do it differently and improve it.

Do I understand correctly that you chose the facade regarding the roof shapes and dormers and are now trying to make everything perfect inside?
I think this is the wrong approach.

I would also design the room layout first. In the modern farmhouse variants, there are houses with different gable shapes that still have this classic look.